Group Project Reflections

After completing the three assignments, I roughly understood how marketing firms figure out a marketing strategy for clients. It is very detail-oriented and teamwork is of utmost importance. In order for our group to produce a good marketing strategy, we have to agree to disagree on many things. For instance, all of us have different ideas on how to approach BlackBerry’s target market but we all found common ground by selecting the best approach.

Throughout the project, all of us found out what each of us were good at and we delegated work according to our strengths. This made it much easier for us to reach our goals for each deadline. On a personal level, I realised my strength lies in video editing which made our last assignment much easier for others. My group is fortunate to have strengths in all aspects of the project such as researching, editing, Prezi presentation etc. Overall, our group worked perfectly well together, with very little conflict or disagreement.

With respect to what I would do differently, I would make our work processes more streamlined. At times, we could not figure out what our assignment rubric was. In this case, we could save time by asking around what the assignment wants exactly instead of coming up with many solutions to the problem.

The lesson I would takeaway from this experience is the deeper understanding of marketing processes and analysis that go with it. A marketing strategy is effective only when it properly analysed and executed.

Marketing tomfoolery: 9 memorable April Fools’ pranks from the ad world

I read this article from the Globe and Mail and thought that this was such an innovative idea for marketing companies.

Link: Marketing tomfoolery: 9 memorable April Fools’ pranks from the ad world

On April Fool’s Day, many well-known companies decided to join in the fun and come up with creative pranks to fool their consumers. Personally, I feel humour attracts consumers the most compared to other genres of marketing advertisements.

The only drawbacks from this sort of “April Fool’s” campaign would be that consumers might really think that it is real. One example of this situation happening was when American Eagle Outfitters announced that they were going to sell “skinny skinny jeans  products” but in fact, these were just denim coloured body paint. Customers actually tried to buy this product and it was really interesting.

Another interesting April Fool’s prank was from Burger King. They came up with the ‘left-handed whopper’, rotating condiments 180 degrees around.

Overall, this April Fool’s campaign by marketers probably brought in much attention during that period. By selecting certain dates to be creative about, marketers are able to come up with imaginative advertisements that suits the event.

 

Nike Celebrates Instagram Milestones by Thanking Its Community

I found this blogpost from one of the more popular online marketing blogs, Convince&Convert, and found it to be very interesting!

Nike Celebrates Instagram Milestones by Thanking Its Community

Nike has grown from the first hashtag #Nike on Instagram two years ago to more than 1 million followers and 6 million photos today. To commemorate this day, Nike created a 24 hour event for the celebration. Nike shared ten Instagram photos from its fans that inspire the company to “push further” on the platform.  Each photo included a motivational caption and highlighted the original fan who created the photo.

The use of social media and the trend of using hashtags to market a company’s brand image has been growing these few years. This could be a form of pull advertising for Nike as the end consumers using Instagram would be exposed to this kind of marketing strategy.

Hashtags are a great way for companies to give further insight into an image or product. They allow for categorisation, interest honing and drive targeted consumer purchases. Nike could be associated with #Nike, #motivation, #justdoit, #exercise, #sports, #athlete etc.

Nike has always been creative in advertising, finding ways to get to the mass consumers. This is one of their methods of connecting with the social media crowd and it is very impressive!

 

Billboard Wars

This marketing post is a reference to my buddy’s blogpost in COMM296: Billboard War

After reading his blogpost about luxury car companies competing with each other for the better billboard ad, I have found other industry’s companies having a billboard war as well.

These are the 10 Fiercest Advertisement Wars.

My personal favourite is the advertisement battle between McDonalds and Burger King. It shows Ronald McDonald, the mascot for McDonalds, ordering food in a trench coat at a Burger King restaurant. The interesting fact about this ad was that he had to hide himself in a suspicious manner, with his red hair and red boots revealing himself to everyone instead.

These competitive advertisements are not legal in some places but I feel that these ad campaigns makes advertising much more interesting from the consumers’ point of view. Some billboards which just informs or persuades consumers may not be appealing to a large audience. Busy people just glance across what it conveys and forget about it the moment they walk past it. These competitive ad campaigns can introduce humour to the consumers which they might share with their friends, increasing the exposure to consumers.

Billboard wars is a great approach to creative advertising whereby both companies outsmart and outwit each other to come out as the winner of the “war”. I would very much like to see a huge billboard war between Samsung and Apple for their smartphones because I can anticipate it to be very interesting.

 

Why companies pay big bucks to advertise during the Super Bowl

Link: Why companies pay big bucks to advertise during the Super Bowl

Super Bowl ad prices have been on the rise for the last couple of years. It used to cost $2,385,365 in 2007 and now, it costs $3,442,752. It seems crazy to pay that amount of money for a 30 second commercial but why do companies still do so?

I feel that Super Bowl commercials are a special genre of commercials whereby marketing companies throw out all they have for the products they are marketing for. It’s like a “Super Bowl” for commercials. The best and most entertaining commercials tend to be aired only during the Super Bowl period.

One Super Bowl commercial that stood out was a commercial by Chrysler’s Ram which is mostly composed by photos. It lasts around 2min which means that Chrysler would have paid a whopping $16 million to broadcast this ad!

Chrysler’s Super Bowl Commercial

Unethical advertisement by Gillette

This article on Gillette is a clear example of an unethical advertisement. It misled consumers into thinking that their product have the ability to “raise hair for a better shave”. This false claim resulted in Gillette violating consumer-related laws in Canada and the US.

As such, the parties involved in this case are Gillette, the consumers who purchased the M3Power and the Settlement Class Counsel. Those consumers who have purchased the M3Power are able to get a refund for their purchase.

This case shows us that false claims can result in lawsuits and a lower reputation for the company. Consumers in future will think twice about purchasing the company’s products even if the benefits are true.

However, Gillette is very aggressive in their advertising campaign. They have a new advertisement every few months, creating a strong brand image for their razors. Thus, will this lawsuit affect their credibility? I don’t think so because consumers will feel that Gillette is a well known company and this lawsuit will just be forgotten. Consumers will still rely on Gillette for trustworthy razors even though the advertisements are misleading.

This is the link for the article:

http://www.bruceonshaving.com/2010/11/22/gillette-in-proposed-7-5-million-settlement-for-alleged-false-and-misleading-marketing/